Lavender Newswire: Obama & Reagan Sitting in a Tree

From Lavender Newswire January 18, 2008:
There’s little I can say that hasn’t already been said in the wake of Barack’s love-fest with Ronald Reagan, in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal (given in order to gain the paper’s endorsement) — except: If you don’t understand the outrage, you’re either too young to remember, or appreciate, the enormity of the damage Reagan and his nest of freedom-hating vipers inflicted on America — and don’t give a damn about learning your nation’s history — or you were a Reagan voter who’s still in denial.

For the rest of us still trying to heal from the Reagan Era, this is what the fuss is all about — or, more accurately, this is what Obama is all about:

“I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Obama did not specify what he believes those “excesses” were. But Reagan is widely credited with leading a rightwing backlash against the gains of the civil rights and feminist movements that preceded his 1980 election.

Democracy Now
January 17, 2008

Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement. The libertarian anti-government ideology of an unaccountable large liberal government was designed by ideological conservatives to take advantage of the backlash against these ‘excesses’.

Matt Stoller
Obama’s Admiration of Ronald Reagan
Open Left
January 16, 2008

What about the civil rights movement, which had a huge effect on the ’60s. Was that an excess? Were people who protested the Vietnam War, because they felt it was fundamentally wrong, much the same as many of us feel concerning Iraq, an excess? What about the strong feminism movement? Was that an excess? Or how about the new found concern of the environment? Was that an excess too?

Obama Says What?!?!?!
Politidose
January 17, 2008

What planet does Obama live on?

His narrative completely excludes stagflation, high gas prices, and the hostage crisis in Iran. Think they might have been factors in the 1980 election?

He also fails to reconcile the fact that Reagan won just 50.7% of the vote in 1980 (his landslide was in 1984) with his theory that there was a unified national mood.

He also fails to explain why, if the nation was so unified, 1980 saw one of the strongest third-party campaigns in 20th century American history.

Moreover, Obama ignores the racism that was fundamental to Ronald Reagan’s campaign. Recall that Reagan began his campaign with a call for state’s rights in Philadelphia, MS.

Obama: GOP was the “party of ideas” during past decade
JedReport
January 17, 2008

He [Reagan] was openly — openly — intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment.

I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.

Sen. John Edwards
January 17, 2008

[Reagan] never did make a similar peace with the “welfare queens” he fabricated out of whole cloth to push his anti-compassionate conservatism. Nor with the African Americans he insulted by launching his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were slaughtered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Nor with the Berkeley students demonstrating in a closed-off plaza whom he ordered tear-gassed by helicopter in 1969.

Nor, last but not least, with the tens of thousands of AIDS corpses whose disease he did not even deign to publicly acknowledge until 1987.

Rick Perlstein
Miscasting Reagan As “Optimistic”
Campaign for America’s Future
January 16th, 2008

To say that Reagan gave the country change and Clinton did not is, quite frankly, insane.

Obama Says What?!?!?!
Politidose
January 17, 2008

When I think about the 60s and the 70s, I think about Medicaid, Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, Community Development Block Grants… It’s astounding to me to have this blanket endorsement of a right wing attack.

When he says government in effect grew too much in the 60s and 70s… Reagan agreed with that. This is not simply a tribute to Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric but an endorsement of some of the substance.

Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
Conference call
January 18, 2008

“I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there… over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”

So I suppose that means George Bush (past 7 years), had some good ideas? I suppose he thinks Bob Dole’s ideas were better than Clinton’s in ‘96? Does he think Gingrich had the right ideas in the ’90s?

Obama Says What?!?!?!
Politidose
January 17, 2008

The Republicans were the party of ideas for the last 10 to 15 years, because they were challenging conventional wisdom? OK, now I’m completely boggled. Is Obama talking about the same GOP I know — the Republican party of Tom DeLay and George Bush? The party in which candidates compete to see who can do the best Reagan impersonation? This is the party that’s challenging conventional wisdom? What’s going on here?

Paul Krugman
Reagan and Obama
The Conscience of a Liberal
January 17, 2008

That’s not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years.

I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.

Sen. Hillary Clinton
Conference call
January 18, 2008

The Republicans have been the party of ideas for the past ten to fifteen years? Including the last seven years of Bill Clinton’s administration? Really, Mr. Obama?

So just what did William Jefferson Clinton do for blacks and Latinos?

Since the economy is the hot topic these days, let’s just look at what President Clinton did for minorities in terms of economic gains. …


Unemployment Rate for African Americans and Hispanics Remains Historically Low. Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, the Hispanic unemployment rate has dropped from 11.3 percent in January 1993 to a record low of 5.8 percent in March 1999. The unemployment rate for African Americans has fallen from 14.1 percent in January 1993 to 8.1 percent in March 1999 — one of the lowest levels on record for African Americans.

Here are additional economic accomplishments of the Clinton/Gore administration — as of 1999 (during the administration’s second term) — that also had a direct positive effect for minorities…

. . .

Listen, Mr. Obama. If you think that President Clinton and Vice President Gore accomplished those amazing turnarounds for the economy and for minorities by singing “Kumbayah” with Republicans, you’ve just shown how naive you are.

And you’ve exposed how uninformed you are about the brutal history of U.S. politics where every progressive step is spattered with the blood, sweat and tears of all who fought so hard for those gains.

How we yearn for those 1990s that you dismiss, Mr. Obama.

susanhu
Obama Alert: Reagan’s “Dismal Legacy on Civil Rights”
MyDD.com
January 18, 2008

[The interview] also re-aroused my suspicions that Obama is not a real Democrat, given as he is to touting GOP talking points on Social Security and presenting far weaker economic stimulus and health care plans than his rivals. Are his real political views more like Reagan’s than the Democraty party’s? It’s quite possible.

Worst of all, it reminded me of Obama’s dreamy attitude about the presidency. He thinks he can just be the “vision” guy and get “smarter people” around himself, and that the governing will take care of itself.

Never mind that George W. Bush — taking off where Ronald Reagan began — has decimated all key federal agencies of their most experienced staffers and devastated the agencies’ budgets, so much so that some will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

SusanUnPC
Obama Wants to Emulate Reagan?
The Cynicism of the “Hope” Panderer
No Quarter
January 16, 2008

JedReport was unable to reach Newt Gingrich, the chief intellectual of the Republican Party for comment. JedReport was able to confirm that Albert Gore, has had an idea or two over the last fifteen years, however.

Obama: GOP was the “party of ideas” during past decade
JedReport
January 17, 2008

“I didn’t I didn’t come of age in the battles of the 60s, so I’m not as invested in them. So I think I talk differently about issues and I think I talk differently about values, and that’s why… um, I-I think we’ve been resonating with the American people.

“I think… And, by the way, when I say this sometimes, it’s-it’s interpreted as ‘I don’t think anybody who’s a Baby Boomer should be president’ — that’s not what I’m saying, but what i’m saying is… I think the average Baby Boomer has moved beyond a lot of the arguments of the 60s but our politicans haven’t. We’re still having the same arguments, you know, it’s all around cultural wars and it’s all, you know, even when you discuss war, you know, the frame of reference is all Vietnam — well, that’s not my frame of reference, you know, my frame of reference is what works. And my— even when I first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was: ‘I don’t oppose all wars.’ You know… it… it… specifically to make clear this is not just a… anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.”


In one fell swoop, Obama disparages the success-filled, non-stop efforts of millions of people during the 1960s and 1970s…

SusanUnPC
Obama Panders to Right, Throws Democrats Under the Bus
No Quarter
January 17, 2008

I guess disrespecting Dr. King and other leaders of the “fights of the 60s” is ok if you are Obama.

Big Tent Democrat
Obama: GOP The Party Of Ideas
TalkLeft
January 17, 2008

News flash: Barack Obama isn’t invested in the 1960s. No kidding. He’s not invested in reality either.

. . .

The 1970s peace movement helped stop the Vietnam war. It’s what drew John Kerry to the Senate to give one of the most electrifying speeches from a military veteran in U.S. history.

. . .

The cult of personality of Reagan, now Obama, has another thing in common. The arrogance to seduce the masses into believing something that isn’t so. Obama is convinced that Reagan was transformational, but misses on what grounds that transformation occurred.

That Obama made his case by attacking the “anti-military” Democratic rabble who Reagan also blamed for bringing this country to its knees in the 70s, because of the peaceniks’ love-in kind of approach, which was the in thing after the carnage of the Vietnam war, without realizing what he’s doing proves Mr. Obama’s cluelessness.

Reagan was the antithesis of “an anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.” Now we find out that Obama is too. Who’s going to tell John Kerry?

Good Grief!
That’s Me on the Left
January 18, 2008

Astounding isn’t it? Yep, let’s put the guy who brought us “Iran-Contra, “Star Wars,” and “the largest deficits then ever known” up on a pedastal and claim he transformed this nation with “clarity” and “optimism.”

Pamela Leavey
Say What? Reagan Had Clarity?
The Democrat Daily
January 16, 2008

Reagan — the Hollywood red-baiter who rose from president of the Screen Actors Guild to president of the United States even though he was already senile. Reagan who gave us tax cuts and “trickle down” economics that didn’t work — except for the rich and richer and richest. Reagan who let “mommy” (Nancy) run the white house with the aid of her astrologer. Reagan whose horse was smarter than he was.

Give me a break. One of the most disgusting sights in recent years was the genuflecting before this total fraud that went on at his funeral. And the hypocritical bullshit being trumpeted by the networks! Where were all the actors and writers and directors whose lives he ruined? I guess they were dead. But — what, me worry? — in America nobody knows one crumb of history, so Ronald Reagan’s vicious red baiting, how he rose to prominence by smearing other actors and writers and directors, was totally forgotten.

I suppose Mr. Obama has forgotten too — scholar of history that he is. Perhaps he was not alive in the 50s so he knows nothing about it — the Army-McCarthy hearings, the smearing of creative artists who donated to Spanish Civil War Relief even though they were not “card-carrying” communists. They happened, like my parents, and their friends, to have given money to help little Spanish children, orphaned by the Spanish Civil War — and ever after they trembled lest Ronnie Reagan and his ilk witch-hunt them.

Erica Jong
Barack Hearts Ronnie: An Old, New Song
Huffington Post
January 18, 2008

Nowadays, as we grapple with the malevolence of President Bush, it’s Reagan we remember as the sensible one. At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, let memory at least acknowledge that there was much about Reagan that was not so sensible.

Rick Perlstein
Miscasting Reagan As “Optimistic”
Campaign for America’s Future
January 16th, 2008

It’s not just more evidence that Obama was willing to say whatever it took to get the conservative editorial board to endorse him. It’s worse. It’s much worse.

It is further evidence that not only does Obama have no sense of the history of the last half of the 20th century — wait until you see the video below the fold — but also that he really is as conservative as his weak health care plan and far weaker economic stimulus plan have hinted. (Then there’s his use of GOP scare-tactic talking points on Social Security, and how he has been embraced by the right — including George Will who last year compared Obama to Ronald Reagan…

SusanUnPC
Obama Panders to Right, Throws Democrats Under the Bus
No Quarter
January 17, 2008

Liberals always talk as if only the conservatives of our own generation were scary, and the conservatives of a previous generation kind of cuddly. Not helpful. Reagan really did almost blow the world up.

Rick Perlstein
Miscasting Reagan As “Optimistic”
Campaign for America’s Future
January 16th, 2008

Look, I know this is weedy stuff and probably doesn’t matter to the average voter under the age of 45. But to long time liberals who lived through this period as an adult, it’s like waving a red flag in our faces. Reagan ran explicitly against the left (and in the process normalized the kind of indecent talk that made Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter millionaires.) Because he won big in 1984, leaders in both parties accepted this omnipotent Reagan myth and have run against liberalism ever since — and have ended up, through both commission and omission, advancing the destructive conservative policies that brought us to a place where we are debating things like torture. It would be helpful if ending the era of Democrats running against the liberal base could be part of this new progressive “trajectory.”

digby
You Sir, Are No Ronald Reagan
Hullabaloo
January 16, 2008

Some of us also remember the early devastating AIDS epidemic sweeping through the gay community without a word of support, comfort, or recognition from Ronald Reagan.

Some of us remember the lies about “Welfare Queens” he used to justify horrible callous, usually racist rhetoric about vulnerable fellow citizens.

Some of us remember illegal drugs sold on the streets of our cities to pay for illegal arms to the Contras and torturers and death-squads, while Nancy piously suggested we “Just Say No” as the racist War on Drugs ramped up here.

Some of us remember that an extreme minority of anti-democratic fundamentalist zealots started calling themselves “The Moral Majority” in the Reagan years.

Some of us remember Reagan telling us “government is the problem” and then seeing to it that whenever Republicans are in charge they would damn well prove it.

Some of us remember how Reagan sold the lie that giving to the rich and taking from the poor would create prosperity that would “trickle down” to the poor anyway.

Some of us remember Reagan tearing down Carter’s solar panels from the White House and his choice of James Watt as environment secretary.

Some of us remember “Ronbo” belligerently making war noises, throwing his weight around, and joking about nuclear strikes.

Some of us remember PATCO, and Reagan’s war on the unions that created a democratizing middle class (even if it never managed to extend to people of color as it so urgently needed to do).

Ronald Reagan was an evil bastard and he set the stage for the even worse Killer Clowns of the present Administration.

Feel good bullshit about the affable Gipper is dishonest and dangerous and damaging and we will not stand for it.

Obama’s Reagan
amor mundi
January 17, 2008

No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for “Reagan Democrats,” peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.

One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 — one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn’t free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.

There’s enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don’t think Democrats really need to go there.

Jane Hamsher
Obama and Ronald Reagan’s Slipping Halo
firedoglake
January 16, 2008

…if you think, as Obama does, that Reagan’s rise to power was premised on a sunny optimism in contrast to an out of control government and a society rife with liberal excess, then you don’t understand the conservative movement. Reagan tapped into greed and fear and tribalism, and those are powerful forces. Ignoring that isn’t going to make them go away.

Matt Stoller
Obama’s Admiration of Ronald Reagan
Open Left
January 16, 2008

It’s not as if nobody saw this coming — the warnings were there, over and over and over again. Did anyone think the Donnie McClurkin flap was an isolated incident? The easy dismissal of the Baby Boomers? The attack on church-state separatists?

(What “attack on church-state separatists,” you ask? Better you should ask, “Which attack on church-state separatists?” But here’s just one example, from his keynote address at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference: “At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word ‘Christian’ describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.” Nice job broadbrushing those of us who believe in Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation” as a bunch of Christian-haters, Obama.)

Here are just a few — a very few — of the warning signs (note the dates):


Just before U.S. Sen. Barack Obama admitted on the TV television program “Meet the Press” last fall that he was thinking about a run for the presidency, host Tim Russert asked him to define a great president.

. . .

Then, waxing more philosophical, Obama addressed the broader, cultural significance. “When I think about great presidents,” he said, “I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways so that, at the end of their tenure, we have looked and said to ourselves, that’s who we are. And … you know, there are circumstances in which I would argue Ronald Reagan was a very successful president.”

. . .

In terms of political philosophy, professional background and racial heritage, Obama and Reagan are distinctly different, one a figure of the new century and the other a representative of the previous one.

Look more closely, however, and you see a number of striking parallels between the young senator contemplating a White House campaign and the late, Illinois-born two-term president. …

. . .

Are such parallels predictive? Of course not. The disparity between Reagan and Obama in governmental experience is profound. Eight years as governor of the country’s most populous state is executive training that eight years in the Illinois state Senate and less than a full term in the U.S. Senate could never offer. And other differences abound.

But the intriguing similarities reveal two political figures possessing common traits, including vivid personalities with rare skill in connecting with the public. Both, in their ways, speak American, the distinctive dialect of the nation’s ideals and yearnings. Reassuring smiles and welcome wit of self-deprecating humor notwithstanding, electoral ambition is an animating drive for each.

In Reagan’s case, it took three campaigns spanning 12 years to reach the White House. Will Obama’s future follow such a course? His much-anticipated decision about 2008 will start to answer that question.

Robert Schmuhl
Reagan and Obama: Not so different?
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Chicago Tribune
January 14, 2007

I recommend that every Dem read Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” and read it with a critical eye.

I didn’t know much about Obama so I bought the book. It was an eye-opener.

He is laudatory of Ronald Reagan for his involvement in ending the Cold War. He makes no mention of the bloated military budget taking down the Soviet Union.

He says “Bush won two elections”. There is no mention of election fraud in either Florida or Ohio. He tells stories about first meeting Bush; he definitely was taken in by Bush’s “folksy” charm.

He refers to the “bankruptcy of socialism”.

He claims the press is only “distracted” not bought.

His discussion of 9/11 says nothing about questions disputing the “official” story of how it happened.

I found enough in it to give me pause about Obama, especially since he’s running a campaign on personality as opposed to policy.

mnhtnbb
Democratic Underground
May 7, 2007

From The Audacity Of Hope:

p. 32:


That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was government at every level had become to cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exagerrated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.

Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.

pp. 156-157:


The conservative revolution Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing he pie — contained a good deal of truth.

Bad Judgement! Obama Votes for Bush-Cheney Energy Bill

Showing his style of leadership, Obama voted in 2005 for the Bush-Cheney energy bill. loaded with tax breaks for big oil companies. According to Amanda Groscom Little in grist.org:
"Four years, two failed conference attempts, and one filibuster after the Republican leadership first introduced the Bush-backed energy bill into Congress, the controversial legislation is being signed into law today by the president, yielding a major victory for the White House -- and exposing Democrats' continued inability to rally around a unified vision and stay on message.
When House and Senate negotiators met to hammer out a compromise version of the bill in conference committee last month, it was predictably stripped of nearly all its environmentally ambitious provisions, including one requiring utilities to generate 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. What's left is a dizzying $14.5 billion in energy-industry subsidies, only about 20 percent of which will go to renewable-energy development.

As expected, the legislation has been trounced as pork at its worst by everyone from enviros to fiscal conservatives, even as it's been hailed by most energy-industry players and Republicans as an unqualified triumph. Less predictably, the bill garnered votes and accolades from a number of Senate Democrats.

Senate Energy Committee ranking member Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) beamed that the post-conference bill has "many more bright spots than flaws and deserves passage by the Senate and signature by the president."
Harder for progressives and enviros to swallow was the support it got from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who expressed disappointment that the bill wasn't more bold but still went so far as to call the legislation "a first step toward decreasing America's dependence on foreign oil." It could more credibly be described as yet another step toward subsidizing Illinois corn farmers for ethanol production that will be of dubious environmental benefit.
Bingaman and Obama were far from alone: Over half of the Democratic caucus in the Senate voted for the bill. Most of these yea votes came from senators whose states stood to benefit markedly from the subsidies, while most of the nay votes were cast by senators from non-energy-producing states.

Critics argue that this split among Dems wasn't just a practical failure that gave way to shoddy energy policy; it was also a symbolic failure for the Democratic Party at large.

"The final language in the bill fell considerably short of the standards [Minority Leader Harry] Reid [D-Nev.] outlined as the Democratic plan for energy independence," said Ana Unruh Cohen, associate director for environmental policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C.

In May, Reid released a statement challenging the White House to produce a forward-looking energy policy. "Democrats remain fully committed to working to pass an energy bill that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil," he stated, and went on to outline the eight priorities that Dems would stand by: a renewable-electricity portfolio standard, a reduction of oil consumption by at least 1.75 million barrels of oil per day by 2015, electricity reliability standards, "strong energy-efficiency standards" for buildings and appliances, a "significant increase in homegrown biofuels," a "comprehensive" climate-change provision, production tax credits for geothermal, solar, wind, and biomass, and complete protection of existing environmental laws and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"Of this list, the Senate Dems got some bio-fuel provisions, a significantly scaled-down version of their energy-efficiency and production tax-credit requests, the electricity-reliability title, and they managed to fend off many of the encroachments on environmental laws," said Kevin Curtis, vice president of National Environmental Trust. "They lost everything else."

Bad Judgememt! Obama Says Republicans Were Party of Ideas

From Paul Krugman's NYT column on Janaury 21, 2008:
Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.

And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.
Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”
Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?
For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.
When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.
Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.
For example, I’m not sure what “dynamism” means, but if it means productivity growth, there wasn’t any resurgence in the Reagan years. Eventually productivity did take off — but even the Bush administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers dates the beginning of that takeoff to 1995.
Similarly, if a sense of entrepreneurship means having confidence in the talents of American business leaders, that didn’t happen in the 1980s, when all the business books seemed to have samurai warriors on their covers. Like productivity, American business prestige didn’t stage a comeback until the mid-1990s, when the U.S. began to reassert its technological and economic leadership.
I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)
But why would a self-proclaimed progressive say anything that lends credibility to this rewriting of history — particularly right now, when Reaganomics has just failed all over again?
Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies.
And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.
This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.
It’s not just a matter of what happens in the next election. Mr. Clinton won his elections, but — as Mr. Obama correctly pointed out — he didn’t change America’s trajectory the way Reagan did. Why?
Well, I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.
Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.

Bad Judegement! Obama Embraces Right-Wing Talking Points

From The CarpetbaggerReport.com on January 2, 2008 :
It’s been brewing for quite a while, but over the last couple of days, a lot of prominent Democratic bloggers have been hammering Barack Obama for using “conservative frames” to advance his candidacy. It’s counter-intuitive, of course, given the circumstances — Obama is a top challenger for the Democratic nomination, so one assumes he’d be running to the left, not the right.

But many, if not most, of my colleagues see a disconcerting — indeed, downright offensive — trend from the senator’s campaign. Markos summarized the concerns of many with an item yesterday.

You know, I was going to vote for Obama and even announced that a week or so ago. But this is a great example of why it’s best to wait and see how things shake out. Not being blinded by candidate worship, it’s easier to sniff out the bullshit. And you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that’s not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy’s hearts a flutter.

Now, I like to think I’m fairly sensitive to Democrats parroting Republican talking points, and I’ve certainly noticed all of the examples that have annoyed the netroots. For that matter, I’d certainly prefer if Obama were far more cognizant of these concerns, because my hunch is that it’s more carelessness than intentional strategy.

That said, I think some of these examples are more grating than others.

Here’s a closer look at the most notable recent incidents, with a patented Lieberman Rating System — 5 Liebermans for the most annoying use of conservative frames, 1 Lieberman for the least annoying.

1. “Attacking” Gore and Kerry: 2 Liebermans

According to one report, based on a person in attendance at an Obama event, the senator was making the case for his electability. He apparently said, “I don’t want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats — we’ve done that in 2004, 2000.” This has been interpreted as Obama “attacking” Gore and Kerry, calling them divisive.

It’s hardly artful rhetoric, to be sure, but I just didn’t read it the same way Obama critics did. My take was far more in line with Oliver Willis’ — as I heard it, Obama was saying that we were dealing with an evenly-divided, 50-50 electorate. Obama, in contrast, believes (rightly or wrongly) that he can move the needle, attract both Dems and non-Dems, and successfully expand the Democratic coalition. I’ve heard Gore and Kerry bashing; this ain’t it. (Also, the Obama campaign claims that the quote itself is mistaken.)

2. Health care and mandates: 5 Liebermans
Ezra noted that it’s “worrisome” that Obama would “flood the radio with ads claiming ‘Clinton would force people to buy insurance even if they can’t afford it’ and ‘Barack Obama will cover everyone.’” Point: critics.

The only major difference between Obama’s plan and that of Edwards and Clinton are mandates. But Obama’s explanation of the difference has, regrettably, used conservative frames in very unhelpful ways.

3. “Trial lawyer”: 3 Liebermans
Over the weekend, the WaPo reported, “In one of his standard riffs, Obama asserts that his career choices — community organizer, civil rights lawyer, elected official — underscores his commitment to public service and to bringing about political and social change. He always mentions the lucrative job offers he turned down, but today he added a new line. ‘That’s why I didn’t become a trial lawyer,’ Obama told the Newton audience.”

If he added the line, it was no doubt intentional, but as trial-lawyer bashing goes, this seems pretty mild. Obama’s point was that he went to Harvard Law and could have made all kinds of money, but he chose to use his law degree to advance progressive ends, not get rich. It’s hardly an unreasonable pitch for the candidate to make, though he probably could have made the same point without the “trial lawyers” crack.

4. Unions are “special interest” groups: 2 Liebermans
Clinton and Edwards have benefited from 527 groups spending heavily in Iowa on their behalf; Obama hasn’t. Because Edwards, in particular, has denounced 527s’ role in campaigns, Obama has been making a hypocrisy charge. In the process, he’s accused “special interest” groups of boosting Edwards, and because some of the groups are union-affiliated, some have accused Obama of taking a conservative, anti-labor position.

This seems like a stretch. It’s not union bashing to have a fight over 527s, and for that matter, the 527 acting on Edwards’ behalf isn’t backed exclusively with labor money.

I get the sense that Obama has developed a reputation in some circles for embracing conservative frames, so there may be greater scrutiny in this area. I also get the sense there’s some Rorschach tests at play — Obama fans see harmless comments, Obama critics see GOP talking points.

On the whole, I’d say Obama needs to be far more aware of the problem — particularly on healthcare — but some of the concerns seems overwrought.

Update: My friend Melissa McEwan asks me to tackle two more examples (which I didn’t include because they came a little further back during the campaign).

5. Social Security is facing a “crisis”: 4 Liebermans
Over the summer, Obama sought to prove that he, unlike Clinton, was willing to be candid with voters about difficult subjects. Regrettably, he chose Social Security, and described the SS system as facing a “crisis.” Dumb move.

I don’t give it the full 5 Liebermans, though, because Obama at least realized he’d messed up, and soon after backpedaled, conceding that the system faces “challenges,” not a “crisis.” Better yet, he also dropped the whole issue from his talking points, which was a big step in the right direction.

6. The McClurkin debacle: Incomplete
I wasn’t sure whether to include this one, because it doesn’t quite fit in the “conservative frame” discussion. It was a big campaign mistake, but Obama, as far as I can tell, wasn’t using (or accused of using) Republican talking points.

To briefly recap, the Obama campaign hosted a gospel event in South Carolina in October featuring a homophobic entertainer — Donnie McClurkin, a Grammy-winning singer, who claims to have been “cured” of homosexuality, and believes other gays can overcome their “curse” by way of prayer.

There were doubts, raised in some circles, about whether the campaign deliberately chose an anti-gay performer for the concert, as a way of scoring points with bigots. All evidence suggests otherwise — Obama aide Steve Hildebrand, and a prominent gay adviser, Tobias Wolff, conceded that the campaign simply didn’t do its due diligence, and didn’t realize what McClurkin had said about gays. They also stressed Obama’s “unequivocal” commitment to gay rights, denounced McClurkin’s anti-gay views, and added an openly gay minister to the gospel event. If this were an effort to “throw gays under the bus,” the campaign wouldn’t have taken those steps at all.